Category: business advice

Carving up the web

What the new domain names mean to your business

As we discussed in 2008, there’s a new type of Internet address about to sweep into the online world. It may well change the web, but not quite in the way the promoters are saying.

On Monday ICANN, the International Committee of Assigned Network Names, approved the release of custom global Top Level Domain names. Organisations can now buy their own Internet addresses rather than adding a .com or .com.au to the end of their online business names.

For example Telstra can replace their telstra.com.au or telstra.com addresses with .telstra and offer sites like support.telstra or shop.telstra.

Some are claiming this portends the end of the dot com era as business drift across to these newer domains and abandon the addresses we’ve become used to over the last 20 years. Others say it will make data easier to find and consequently kill the search industry.

In truth, the immediate effects on business are going to be limited, but these new names are part of a much bigger change that is happening in the online world.

Take up will be slow

One of the first things to understand with these domains is they are mired in bureaucracy with ICANN itself estimating the approval process will take between eight and eighteen months.

Should an application be approved, there will also be a period where approvals will be subject to appeal, this in itself will prove interesting when conflicting claimants  decide to fight over a domain.

The arguments over who owns generic names will probably end up in the courts while geographic disputes say between Melbourne, Florida or Melbourne, Victoria over the .melbourne address will require some very tricky negotiation.

Costs are high

The application cost of one of these global Top Level Domains is estimated to be $185,000 US with $25,000 annual fees so this is a game for only the biggest players.

Even then, we’ll see many corporations not bothering. Given the current proposal includes strong provisions against cybersquatting, there’s no need for trademark holders to rush, it’s quite feasible that many will sit out the hype and wait for the prices to drop.

ICANN’s track record is not good

Over the last decade ICANN have approved 14 new domains ­– .aero, .coop, .museum, .name, .pro .asia, .cat, .jobs, .post, .tel, .travel, .biz, .info, and .mobi – the last three have been mildly successful but most of these names have been ignored, a precedent that doesn’t bode well for a corporation or government building their own domains

There are some useful network management reasons and possibly some branding opportunities with these names, but the risk of confusing customers or web surfers seems to be high.

In this respect, the argument that the new domains will kill search engines seems odd as more addresses is going to increase the demand for a reliable way to find things online.

The middlemen assemble

Already some are touting the new domain names as an opportunity to get more money out of businesses with the idea various sectors can be enticed to use industry or location specific names. However history isn’t on the side of those schemes as we’ve already seen the release of the .travel and .jobs domains being greeted with a yawn.

One effect we can expect is that we’ll be told over the next few years how important it is be to list our business names with a whole lot of new domains; musicians might be urged to sign up with .music or Perth based enterprises to lock in a .perth name. In many ways these ideas already seem to be an attempt to replicate the old directory businesses that the Internet has destroyed in the last decade.

Locking down the web

Along with being a cash grab by ICANN, the custom domain name is part of the attempt to divide the public Internet into a cluster of privately controlled fiefdoms.

We’re seeing with social media sites like Facebook – and we can be pretty sure .facebook will be an early candidate for listing – striving to lock users onto their service. These new domain names will help them do that and in turn protect data on their networks being shared on the wider Internet.

This is going to play out in a very interesting way over the next few years as the large players jostle for their slice of the web.

Some larger businesses, and gullible governments, are going to fall for this money grabbing exercise, while the majority of Internet users will be excluded simply by the cost and bureaucratic requirements.

This grab for the Internet is a game for big, well funded players and most of us will be spectators in this struggle. Have no doubt though that while watching the big boys fighting over their Internet turf will be fun sport it will be us that will pay for the results.

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The boundary of success

Customer facing workers are not an organisation’s fringe

Management speak is fascinating in the way the language constantly develops new words and phrases. One term gaining currency right now is the “boundary worker”.

In its most charitable sense, a boundary worker’s job is client facing, being where the organisation meets its clients. Generally these are the salespeople, customer support officers, call centre workers and check in clerks.

There’s a common factor here, most of these people are considered dispensable by a modern management, with most of the job descriptions of “boundary workers” being those eliminated or outsourced when costs need to be cut.

A story in the computer trade press last week illustrated this attitude where an airline announced they were moving their boundary workers – their check-in staff, cabin crew and pilots – to a basic email service while keeping their office staff on the more sophisticated and richer IT platforms.

What jumped out of that story was the underlying assumption that these “boundary workers” are on the periphery of the organisation’s operations despite being the people directly responsible for getting passengers, otherwise known as paying customers, safely to their destinations.

This idea that anyone outside of head office is at best an irritating cost centre isn’t just confined to airlines, management focus on building bureaucratic empires while neglecting the organisation’s purpose is a malady that in many ways goes to the root of what ails the modern corporatist economy.

Australian governments suffer badly from this because “boundary workers” have largely felt the burden of the last two decades of public service cost cutting. This has stripped government organisations of any corporate memory or the skills to manage programs and people, which in turn has caused politicians much grief as they find they can’t execute promises.

The corporate sector is also guilty of this; a recent “digital business” product launch by a major telco directed prospective customers to a “coming soon” website. Despite this organisation having hundreds – if not thousands – of bureaucrats, it couldn’t effectively launch a product line around its core services.

Probably the best example of this syndrome was Nortel, the Canadian based telco that never recovered from the dot com bust after expanding aggressively through the late 1990s.

As Nortel’s finances suffered, the company responded by steadily shedding support, engineering and sales staff, locking the business into a death spiral as competitors’ sales staff tempted clients to better products with superior customer service.

The funny thing with Nortel was it was fairly rare to see senior managers be affected by lay offs, so the proportion of head office bureaucrats grew in relation to staff numbers. By the time the company sank into receivership, its manager to worker ratio wasn’t probably too dissimilar to a Soviet potato collective.

While it’s tempting to think this is just a big organisation problem, many smaller businesses face it too as owners and managers starve their enterprise of resources while spending up big on prestige cars and other expensive management treats.

On an IT level, it’s common to see the business owner proudly toting a new iPad while his secretary and staff struggle with temperamental ancient desktop computers. Not to mention the proprietor’s home Internet connection being five times faster and more expensive than that of his office.

In an economy where it appears that global corporations and major banks are protected from the consequences, it’s easy to think that we too can ignore our customers and indulge our managers.

If your business isn’t part of a market dominating duopoly then your entire organisation is on the “boundary”, don’t fall for the conceit of marginalising the workers your organisation depends upon.

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Planning for change

In a time of change we need to be flexible

Last weekend’s ABC Radio spot looked at setting up a blog. There’s a whole range of reasons why you’d one to build one; to start a business, to publicise a charity or to show off your hobby.

We were lucky to get food bloggers Thang Ngo from Noodlies and Rebecca Varidel from Inside Cuisine calling in to tell their experiences of setting up successful websites.

One common factor for both was they had started off using the free Google Blogger service and then moved up to the more robust and scalable WordPress platform as their sites took off.

Rebecca and Thang’s journeys, which is common for many businesses and entrepreneurs, illustrates how our plans have to be flexible and the tools we choose must be able to adapt to changed circumstances.

The nineteenth century German general, Helmuth von Moltke, said “no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy”. The same is true of business plans; none survive first contact with the realities of the marketplace.

As our businesses adapt to the ever changing economy and the needs of our customers, we can’t afford to get locked into static tools and responses. Our choices have to reflect that we will make mistakes, assumptions will be proved wrong or our customers, suppliers and staff will change.

Being flexible and open to new ideas is essential to survival in the 21st Century economy. The days of doing things because they have always been done this way are over.

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The ideas revolution: How to set up a blog

It’s never been easier to tell the world about your ideas, passion or business

It’s been a big month for ideas in Sydney with the Sydney Writers Festival, TEDx, Vivid Sydney, AMP Amplify and XMedia Lab along with many other events intended to stimulate thought and action.

One of the things that’s great with the Internet is we’re able to get our ideas out to the world very easily without spending much money. If you have a great idea, for a business, community group or just an interest there’s nothing stopping you letting the planet know about you and your dreams.

During the Sydney Writers Festival we saw debates between food bloggers and the print critics, particularly notable was Food blogger Rebecca Varidel and her Inside Cuisine website.

Earlier in May, Louise Hewson launched her 52 Suburbs book and exhibition which was born out of her website chronicling her discoveries around the suburbs of Sydney.

The biggest challenge is setting up a website so you can be found on the net, today’s tools make it very easy to set up a site. Here’s a few you can use.

Facebook

If you already have a Facebook account, it’s very easy to set up a page covering your topic or idea.

While it’s simple to create a Facebook Page, be aware there are risks as the company has some quirky policies and not everybody has a Facebook account or is comfortable with it.

Blogger

This is the best basic starting tool which also has the attraction of being free.

Blogger’s simple layout which you can change by dragging and dropping the various parts of the website works well and you can add features such as subscription services, advertising, e-commerce and other features by turning on various “gadgets”.

52 Suburbs and Grab Your Fork are two good examples of Blogger based sites. In Louise’s case she registered the 52 Suburbs domain name – the bit behind the “www” or “@” in an email – which costs around $20 a year.

WordPress

The big daddy of Internet publishing is the WordPress tool. This free software drives most websites and is becoming the software of choice. Rebecca at Inside Cuisine and this website are using WordPress along with thousandds of businesses.

One WordPress’ great attractions is it features thousands of ready to use “widgets” and templates that makes it extremely easy to add features and customise your website.

WordPress offers a free service that gives you the basics of the platform. To get the most from WordPress you need to host the site with a web hosting provider and this can get more expensive and complex.

Other tools

There are hundreds of other platforms you can use to get your ideas out to the world. Worpress, Blogger and Facebook are just three of the most popular and easy to use. It’s worth exploring with what you find works well for your idea or business.

Growing your site

As your site grows, you’ll need to manage content, track visitors and promote it through the various social media and traditional methods. We have some free resources from NSW Microbusiness Month that can help you manage and grow your online presence.

More information

In July we’ll launching eBu$iness: 7 Steps to Get Your Small Business Online… and Making Money Now! Which will cover all the steps of getting your business online, promoting it and tracking your success. Pre-release orders are available now.

We also have some free workshops for business wanting to get online sponsored by the NSW Government, contact us for more details.

If you subscribe to our newsletter we also make available various free offers along with keeping readers up to date with smart new ideas.

There’s nothing to stop you getting your ideas online. If you want to do something interesting, or even change the world, the tools are now here for you to do it.

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Business Web Essentials

A free e-book to help your online presence

In conjunction with Microbusiness Week, a New South Wales government initiative to help smaller and startup businesses, we’re happy to release our Business Web Essentials e-book.

This e-book is free to all subscribers of our newsletters lists the online tools that can help your website be more effective online. While it’s aimed at business users, if you’re a blogger or community group running a website you’ll find most of the information in the book will help you as well.

Business Web Essentials lists the important web hosting, search listing, social media and cloud computing services that will help you promote and track the progress of your online presence.

Subscribe now to our weekly newsletter and receive the e-book free of charge. If you’re an existing subscriber, you’ll get the link in our regular newsletter.

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Building business communities

Setting up next door to your competitor could be a good idea

Last night the NSW Government launched Digital Sydney, an initiative to bring together the various groups that make up the digital media and IT industries while raising the city’s profile as a global digital centre.

This project was something close to me as I’d been involved in developing the concept through 2009 when working with the then NSW department of Industry and Investment.

Originally the idea had been to create a digital hub around the Australian Technology Park to the south of the city. Over the decade of its operation, the ATP had attracted some high profile tenants and various high tech business start ups but there was a feeling it could be a more dynamic centre of the Sydney tech sector.

Digital hub failures

The setting up of “digital hubs” around the world has not been a great success – in Ireland an attempt to set one up in central Dublin’s disused Guinness brewery cost the European Union well over 100 million euro and subsequently collapsed amid acrimony between the various governments and businesses involved.

Even if there was a track record of success it’s unlikely any Australian government, state or Federal, would be prepared to spend money on the European scale. So the idea of building a “hub” had to be kept within industry, particularly the IT and digital media sectors.

Existing industry hubs

In talking to the industry, it became apparent that Sydney already a digital hub spreading across the suburbs immediately to the south and west of the city centre and centred around Surry Hills with an vibrant community of developers, designers and entrepreneurs occupying the old factories and warehouses being vacated by the city’s rag trade.

The proximity of competitors, clients and suppliers was why the hub had developed; exactly the reason why the fashion industry had previously concentrated around that district.

This is consistent with history; the great industrial hubs such as the English midlands of the 18th Century, the US mid west of the 19th Century along with today’s Chinese coastal manufacturing centres and event Silicon Valley happened with little government forethought.

Like-minded businesses clustered together because they could find the essential resources for their industry such as raw materials, labour, transport, markets and capital.

A shortage of capital

The access to capital is a problem for all smaller and innovative businesses in Australia, not just those trying to build digital businesses or hubs. Start up enterprises have been starved for capital and a few late stage Venture Capital investments like the recent ones in Atlassian or 99Designs are not on their own enough to build vibrant businesses of the future.

In Australia, it’s difficult to see any government in the near future changing the tax and legal regimes which favour property and stock market speculation over investment in new businesses and technology so the best hope is initiatives like Digital Sydney, along with the profiles of similar industry hubs in Brisbane and Melbourne, can encourage investors to look at the start up and innovation sectors.

Why big cities?

The real question is though is why is this just the major cities? Why can’t we have hubs in Renmark, Esperance or Hobart?

Access to skills and talent are the driving forces behind the local hubs and in that respect some smaller towns and regions do have the skilled workforces and businesses capable of building industrial centres and we’ve seen some regional hubs develop like the wine industry in various places.

So it’s worthwhile considering where your business is located, maybe it would be better to set up next door to your competitor? For many organisations, being part of vibrant industry hub is part of their success.

postscript;

Joe Kelly, former Commercial Director of the Dublin Digital Hub Development Agency, takes me to task on the claim the Dublin Hub collapsed. His comment is as follows:

As the former Director of Commercial Operations at The Digital Hub Development Agency, I felt compelled to correct you on your assertion that the Digital Hub in Dublin collapsed. That is incorrect. Media Lab Europe, an entirely seperate entity collapsed at a cost of over 100 million euro. The Digital Hub continues to thrive with over 100 companies located there. Please refer to www.thedigitalhub.com for further information.

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The listening business

What a crook can teach us about paying attention to customers

Some years back a crook computer repairer did the rounds of Sydney and regional NSW. For all his sins Joe, as we’ll call him, always stood out as an example of a business that effectively listened to the customer.

Joe would advertise in local papers and you could spot his ads by the line “all our technicians are qualified computer programmers”, which is a nonsense slogan like a landscape gardener claiming all her labourers are civil engineering graduates, but it was an effective catchphrase in a market that didn’t know better.

After a while the local community would start wise up to Joe and his “computer programmers” and when the complaints and fair trading investigations mounted, he’d change his business name, move to another suburb or town and the cycle would start again.

I was reminded of Joe at the City of Sydney’s discussion on the connected consumer at the latest Lets Talk Business seminar last week and wondered how he’d survive in today’s markets where people are quick to go online and criticize.

Dealing with criticism has always been big businesses’ Achilles heel; bureaucracies have a tendency to protect themselves and when there’s managerial or team bonuses at stake there’s strong incentive to ignore the concerns of customers.

A good example of this Vodafone where the chief executive, Nigel Dews, has been open in admitting the company failed to listen to their customers as their network failed to meet the demands placed upon it.

While the network itself was buckling under the strain, the company spent millions on sponsorship and advertising effectively trying to drown the criticism under a wave of tightly controlled good news stories, promotions and competitions.

It didn’t work, just as Facebook’s PR agency Burson-Marsteller failed dismally in planting an anti-Google story, which saw the two organisations not only busted but also descend into an unseemly argument with their client while frantically deleting Facebook posts.

All of these actions – deleting social media comments, ignoring customer complaints and attempting to distract critics with pictures of pretty girls and racing cars – smack of the old way of doing business in an era where tightly controlled mass media was the only channel complaints could be heard. Those times ended with the arrival of the Internet.

At the Lets Talk Business event one of the panellists, Jody Fox of Sydney’s Shoes of Prey described how her business is engaging with customers online and discussing any concerns openly on the Facebook page, not deleting them.

This is the new reality of business, if you don’t listen and engage with upset clients or ­– even worse – try to control their comments on your sites, you’ll only get them angrier and they’ll go elsewhere to tell their stories.

Another striking difference between the new and old business was Jody’s point was that shoes of Prey treats customer service as a marketing expense, not a separate cost centre. In most large organisations helping paying customers is treated as an unnecessary expense that should be outsourced and minimised as much as possible.

This sort of works when you have a licensed oligopoly like telecoms or banks but fails dismally in competitive industries. Without purchasers there are no shareholder returns and eventually no executive bonuses.

Ignoring customers worked nicely in the era of mass media when it was difficult for upset clients to be heard above an expensive marketing campaign; Vodafone, Burson-Marsteller and even governments are finding it doesn’t work today.

Joe the computer technician would have understood this, if he’s still doing dodgy IT support then he’ll be watching the Facebook pages, Twitter feeds and blogs for bad news.

Somehow though I suspect he’s no longer in computer repairs though, my guess he’s making a lot more money in social media or search engine optimisation these days.

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